Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

Were you in contact with the resistance movement, the underground?

My first contact with the resistance was um, the ladies--the two ladies who were living downstairs in that, in that part of the house, the non-group. Uh, they are the owners of the house themselves, there were Jews in the house. They had one in hiding and uh, some Gentiles were evacuated from areas that had been inundated and those two ladies were from there. And the first time I came out I talked to them and they offered to, to find place where I could hide. The first time I graciously ??? because of my fear ???.

Did you know they were Resistance people?

I was ??? They found out, they told me it was the ???, the one who selled us um, I believe he was a lawyer. He was um, active in the underground and he is the one who uh, either knew or got hold of the contractor who, from the farmer's ???. [pause]I am not sure, but I believe if I had brought my family with me, my, my parents with me, we'd all been in hiding. And that I ??? everyday, which in itself was extremely risky. It was as risky as uh, ??? under those circumstances ???. ??? my own parents which was new for me because I was just using the ??? upstairs which were already made and even though some of them might be useful for purposes that I might be ??? welfare and safety of my family, I made up with my knowledge of ??? which was ???. Um, I had someone with me when I came to the farmer. He ??? for several months. In that time I was becoming kosher and the farmer and his wife were getting concerned about me because there was very little that I could eat. And so with that money that I had, they brought one large sack of uh, rye. Now rye was real brown and out of that uh, I was taught how to eat a large arm of rye bread. ??? And so there was--it was a special for me. I remember that a sack of rye was hung from a string so that the mice wouldn't have a chance to ???. Uh, and now a little detail, not very important. Uh, especially when that first, when the Jewish family came to live with me, after the first they uh, came there to hide themselves with the farmer ??? they were much more outspoken, their criticism of conditions, and so on. And one thing that they mentioned is this you, this farmer thinks that maybe, if you wash yourself maybe in a certain metal large container. In that same container she prepares people other food. These uh, people, the husband, wife and their wife's daughter uh, they came to stay with us for--they stayed for several months, um. I remember once when that farmer was away, probably visiting his parents on Sunday and because they looked very Jewish and they didn't, sort of stayed inside. He was away and we were, of course, all the time we were ???. We went outside and we stole some fresh red meat which we ate raw and it was yummy, it was delicious.

How many of you were you at this point in hiding?

How long? How many.

How many?

I think we were four. We were four. Husband and wife here, their daughter here, I was here and I remember at the beginning there was a uh, disagreement over where the pillow should be. I, I don't remember the pillow was first next to my head or ??? or whether it was--later on I, I remember ???.